Fleming: Essere James Bond

In the great tradition of excellent, professionally made British TV Series...

How good, how refreshing! Finally a production which entertains, informs and intrigues at the same time! Everything about this show is well done, the script (above all), the direction, the acting, the cinematography, the sound... There is absolutely nothing to complain about. It is interesting, the dialog (finally) is engaging, it is wonderful to hear the English language spoken so beautifully. Yes, it does not completely conform to historical fact, it has been a little dramatized for entertainment purposes, but who cares? It is and remains an excellent production.

I am certain Fleming would have loved this! Well done to all!

Ian Fleming (Dominic Cooper) is a disappointing playboy with a wealthy and well connected family. His brother is the shining star of his mother. He has a great love Muriel Wright (Annabelle Wallis), and a love affair with the married Ann O'Neill (Lara Pulver). His boss is Real Admiral John Godfrey (Samuel West), and assistant Second Officer Monday (Anna Chancellor).

Those who complain about the authenticity really miss the point of the series. His actual career is probably lost forever to time and state secrets. This is a marrying of Ian Fleming and James Bond. Quite frankly, I don't know why nobody has made feature movies about a semi-fictionalized Ian Fleming before. It's a great way to do a Bond movie while skirting the copyright. And you can use Fleming's name right up top maybe even 'The Man who would be Bond'.

This one does it as well as it can be done on TV. The action could be bigger. Dominic Cooper is a bratty playboy writer who turns into a brilliant intelligence officer struggling against the system. All the James Bond ideas are there intermingled with the real Ian Fleming. That's the charming part of this series.

I find it fascinating that much of the criticism in other reviews is based on the idea that James Bond wasn't based on Fleming. A fictional character by its very nature has its roots in more than one place. I've no idea how Fleming's war exploits compare to the novels, but it's quite clear that James Bond's personal behaviors, tastes, preferences, and prejudices are based on Fleming's. His wife made direct reference to this in the series opening and these similarities are well documented in analysis of the novels. Fleming wasn't Bond, nor were any of the others that have been posited as his inspiration. Bond is an amalgam of many, and Fleming himself was certainly one of them.

"Fleming" this is unarguably a piece of fiction with a few bits of truth. "The Man Who Never Was" featured in this program is Non Fiction by author Ewen Montagu. "Fleming" is a brilliant mini-series with a stellar cast but please be advised that it is only very loosely based on his life story. How do we know this? Well here is the evidence for this statement. The last episode of the mini-series (which was probably the best one) features the true story of "The Man Who Never Was" a book famously written by The Hon. Ewen Montagu C.B.E. D.L. Q.C.) It is the true story about a dead man's body clothed in the uniform of a British senior officer with an attaché case handcuffed to it. In the attaché case were planted bogus secret documents outlining bogus plans for the 1944 Allied landings in Europe. This was left by a British submarine off the coast of Spain in a place where it was know it would be swept ashore and reported to a very active German spy network working in the area, based there to spy on the British naval dockyards at Gibraltar. The actress Lara Pulver who plays his then girlfriend is probably the most beautiful woman we have ever seen on the screen c 2014 and will probably look like she does in this film for ever.igw

From the very beginning, we're gently nudged towards the idea that the inspiration to Ian Fleming for James Bond was... Fleming himself. As fictional as that may be, and there are reasons to appreciate it for the entertainment value at least, young Fleming's routine gets old really really fast. The boozing, womanizing, good-for-nothing, but ultimately lovable scoundrel has been portrayed in many a production before. Nothing bad about Dominic Cooper's performance, and he does radiate a certain charm, but really... there's only so much dickish behavior one's charm can excuse.

Ultimately, I got bored by Fleming's antics and the repeated, sanitized sex scenes. The central plot never grasped me and frankly, I ended up not caring particularly much for any of the characters - least of all the titular one.

It's not a bad product per se. But not a very good one either.